Case Study: Adding a Sustainability Levy Without Impacting Budgets

The Challenge of Adding a Sustainability Levy Without Impacting Budgets

The focus on de-carbonising travel was growing at a prestigious Russell Group University in the UK and long-standing customer of Key Travel. The University was looking to implement a carbon offsetting solution against business travel flights to improve travel sustainability.

The challenge was that, although the will to offset was strong, there was concern that adding an incremental cost to individual bookings would impact funding at Faculty and Department levels, creating significant pushback and dissatisfaction.

Our Solution of Adding a Sustainability Levy Without Impacting Budgets

We proposed a simple solution that would capture CO2 emitted in each booking but, rather than add the cost of carbon offsetting to the individual booking, we would capture the costs offline which would be met by the University centrally, without impacting individual budgets.

The Results of Adding a Sustainability Levy Without Impacting Budgets

The solution was quickly developed and implemented as part of the Key Travel IT development roadmap. The flight sustainability levy is now added to all flight bookings with bookers informed during the booking flow, and the cost reconciled centrally bi-annually without adding to individual bookings. The University is now able to report progress in its sustainability goals.